Viewing Images

If you find a picture or its description particularly good or useful, you'll find links to heap praise on either in the thumbs pop-up menu which shows when hovering over the thumb symbol to the right of the main picture. Just click the appropriate link(s).

You can also 'thumb' your own images to keep track of your own favourites. This is counted separately from feedback by others.

While you're at it, you can use the thumb pop-up to throw the image in one or several 'image buckets' - categories which classify the type of image, e.g. whether it is a close-up or a panorama, or if it shows people or landscapes. By doing this, you can help Geograph to narrow down searches and add value for other site users.

Photo Contributors :: Contributing

You can upload images of any dimensions, portrait or landscape, but the file size needs to be under 8 megabytes. We do resize them so their longest dimension is 640 pixels on the main photo page. Optionally, you can also release larger versions of various sizes for downloading and re-use. http://www.geograph.org.uk/article/Larger-Uploads-Information

We only accept JPEG encoded images. If you have any image in another format it will need to be converted.

Ideally images shouldn't have a longest dimension of fewer than 480 pixels. While we might accept such images if they hold particular interest, we would really prefer a larger image.

We do record the EXIF headers from your original image, so it is advantageous to upload your original camera image or use image editing software that maintains the EXIF data if you want this information to be kept (but we don't currently make use of the data).

You may need to rotate the photo to the correct orientation and save it before you upload it. The exact method will depend on the software you are using, if you search in the help for "rotate" you may get some idea.

In Windows 7 the Windows Photo Viewer (which is built in and opens when you double click on a photo) has 2 buttons, at the bottom right of the display, to rotate a photo right or left (i.e. clockwise or anti-clockwise).

In Photoshop Elements from the Image menu, you can choose rotate and you will be presented with a number of options.

Put simply, photographs are made of light. In good light, today's digital cameras make it difficult to take a technically poor photo. Sometimes, though, photos unavoidably come out dark or grey because the subject was in shadow, or it was getting late; worst of all, a cloud appeared overhead and followed you round while the distant landscape was bathed in sunshine. There are ways of making these photos reveal their subjects better.

This isn't a highly technical answer. It refers to features of commonly-used image editing or image enhancement software.

The idea is that you specify at least one 'top' (or 'geographical context') tag. These are about 40 broad classes describing the main aspect of the subject at the time the image was taken. You can add additional top tags if you like, depending on what surrounds your main subject. The top tags are in the tabs labelled 'topography' to 'communications' in the tagging box.

The short list of 'top' tags avoids the clutter of the old categories, but it doesn't give you the flexibility to highlight detail that you feel is important. For that purpose, free-form tags are also available as an option. You can pick the most salient words from your description (the system may even suggest some of them in the 'suggestions' tab), or any others that you would like your image to be found by if someone uses the word as a search term.

In addition you can use prefixed tags for collections of special interest: A railway enthusiast might create a prefix 'locomotive:' and use it to tag the different engines in their pictures. Or someone interested in churches could use a 'denomination:' tag to indicate which particular community uses the place of worship shown. You can also use existing prefixes, e.g. 'place:' or 'near:' to indicate which town someting is in or near to. Have a look at what prefixes and tags others have already created: http://www.geograph.org.uk/tags/ . However, there is no need to restrict yourself in any way to that list. Prefixes are best used wherever it is likely that there will be other examples of your subject (church, locomotive...) with a slightly different attribute (Methodist, Diesel...).

As far as tags are concerned, chaotic growth is encouraged - the top tags are meant to counterbalance that!

Finally, there's buckets (another of the tabs in the tagging box). This is a limited list of special tags that are meant to limit searches to pictures of certain types (rather than certain subjects). For example, the 'gone' bucket is meant for images of which you know for certain that the geographical subject is either no longer there or has changed beyond recognition. If it's just an old picture but the landscape or buildings are the same, then I'd not use the historic bucket. See if any of the other buckets apply to your picture. Examples for some bucket types are in this incomplete article: http://www.geograph.org.uk/article/Image-Buckets .

Finding way in the forum

Members of Geograph can (if you aren't yet, sign up by clicking the 'register link' top right on any page). Go to the forum ('Discussions' in the sidebar menu) and add any pictures you'd like to see in all their glory on the front page for one day only to this thread: http://www.geograph.org.uk/discuss/index.php?&action=vthread&forum=2&topic=17652 . They will then be added to the list from which the daily picture is picked. If you'd like to suggest a picture for a specific day, please say so - there's no guarantee though, as the day may already have a picture assigned to it. You can post a small selection of your own pictures, but it is nice to highlight other peoples efforts as well where you come across them.

There is one technical limitation to bear in mind: The front page picture has to fit in a landscape frame due to the page layout. If it isn't landscape format, it'll be cropped and the central section used. Sometimes that can work, but generally it's best to pick landscape formats in the first place.